An ethnographic study of how self-improvement in China offers fleeting experiences of personal autonomy amid the capitalist dynamics of consumerism, political conformity, and global capitalism.

How do individuals seek to become better people in contemporary China? How do they navigate the complex demands of personal growth within the fragmentation of China's moral landscape, which celebrates rabid consumerism and requires political conformity; where a lively and expressive popular culture coexists with official narratives of nationalism, heteronormativity, and social hierarchy; and where a rigid, exam-driven mass educational system is preparation for an economy of great market disruption and employment uncertainty? Sociocultural anthropologist Gil Hizi's careful ethnography provides nuanced answers to these fraught questions by examining the pursuit and enactment of virtue, termed “capitalist virtuousness,” through the expanding genre of self-improvement. 

Transient Becoming reveals how workshops in soft skills create heterotopian spaces—distinct moral imaginaries that offer participants transient optimism and virtue realization in compensation for the perceived futility of their ambitions and the socioeconomic uncertainties of their daily lives. Within these spaces, individuals experientially exceed their social reality and perform an idealized sense of self-worth and autonomy, even if these transformations remain short-lived.